Despite this film's moodily bombastic advertising campaign, which dryly implies that "White Noise" is the scariest thing in many a moon, it will take less than fifteen minutes of running time before three things happen: 1. You get bored, 2. You start to wonder why the excellent Michael Keaton would choose THIS errant chaff as his "lead performance comeback," and 3. You start checking off your mental checklist of thriller cliches, tropes and stereotypes. And then the end credits hit the screen and you can go home.

I was alternately bored and annoyed throughout the whole of White Noise, but I still hope people like it enough to make the flick an early-year mini-hit. Why? Because a solid moneymaker is what Michael Keaton could really use at this point of his career, and I hope the guy gets it. If White Noise ultimately exists as a springboard for Mike's 'comeback,' then that's just fine by me.

The movie itself? Pretty darn bad.

We open with one of those amazingly sunny moments that telegraphs the entire film in 30 simple seconds: Successful architect John Rivers, played consistently well by Mr. Keaton, wakes up to a gorgeous (and young) wife who is all but over-percolating with stunning smiles, killer curves, and news of an unexpected pregnancy. Hmmm, wonder where this young lass is headed....

Yep, tragedy central. The ethereally beautiful (and YOUNG) little wife has a roadside accident and is assumed dead by all interested parties. Rivers also has an adorable little baby son from a previous marriage, but since the tot has virtually no bearing whatsoever on the film's plot, we'll just assume he's there for background filler and an occasional "Awwwww!!!" from the mommies in the audience. John's missing wife is downgraded from 'definitely missing' to 'unquestionably dead' over the course of a toothless first act...and then comes the "scary stuff."

John realizes that he's being followed by a very obvious (and very fat) Englishman. After confronting the polite stalker, John learns that his newly-dead (young) wife has been "communicating" from the "other side." To a complete and total stranger. Through television static. As is always the case in predictable potboilers like White Noise, our hero is quite skeptical at first. And then suddenly...he's not.

Basically, White Noise feels like the answer to Movie Thriller Formula #323: A big dose of The Sixth Sense mixed liberally with pinches of The Ring, Final Destination, The Forgotten, Frequency and any other PG-13ish "psychological thriller" that people see and promptly forget. (Oh yeah, Dragonfly, too!) It's the kind of "thriller" that exists solely for people who don't really want to be scared. It's a horror movie for the elderly. Psychologically, the conceit doesn't work because, well, the "static ghosts" (a "real-life" phenomenon called EVP, by the way) are more silly than they are intimidating. The whole concept is Twilight Zone-lite...at best.

So if all you're left with is a hard-working lead actor mired in a painfully predictable narrative, your next option is to amp up the fake scares. John sits in a quiet room staring at a TV full of static before -boom- some shocking jolt of visual gimmickry or shrieking musical cue awakens you from your boredom-induced stupor. When White Noise isn't being astronomically derivative, it's clumsily obvious. Minor characters wander into the plot and then vanish forever. Newly introduced characters are presented like we should know them already. And, aside from John Rivers, not one of these characters actually DO anything!

On top of all that: the ending makes no sense, various plot holes are left dangling throughout, the flick is edited with little regard for story cohesion or the maintenance of tension... "White Noise" is a high-concept IDEA that could have made for a workable little horror flick, but (aside from Michael Keaton's better-than-the-material-deserves performance) the end product is a film that's astonishingly drab, aimlessly meandering and entirely beholden to earlier cinematic successes. "Haunted static" indeed. Somewhere Stephen King is slapping his forehead at the missed opportunity.